


Borrowed Time

by lisachan



Series: Leoverse [255]
Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:40:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23132584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan
Summary: Pete and Leo time-and-space traveled to save the universe from a rogue doomed instance in which Leo and Blaine never got together and Blaine ended up marrying Cody. The only way to fix this: convince Cody to leave forever, then wipe everybody's memories and restart the world from scratch. And before they do all this, this is Cody saying goodbye to the love of his life.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Original Male Character
Series: Leoverse [255]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541
Collections: COWT - Clash Of the Writing Titans/Chronicles Of Words and Trials





	Borrowed Time

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is a spin-off sequel for Broken Heart Syndrome. This means that it depicts things happening way late in the 'verse, and that may be on varying degrees of spoiler. At some point, way late in the series, the various universes we've created will start to collapse and crash into one another. This story is about something like that.
> 
> Written for this year's COWT #10, W6, M4, prompt: "Time travel fix-it / sacrificing for a loved one".

Cody has seen this airport busy many times in his life. Blaine and him have traveled a lot, during the years of their marriage and before. From here to New York and back during Blaine’s theatrical seasons, from here to Florence stopping by the JFK and Rome over the summer. They’ve been in Europe many, many times, they’ve been in South America, they’ve been in Australia twice and in Japan more times than Cody feels comfortable in admitting, some of those times for the sole purpose of shopping for clothes for him, too.

And yet it has never been busier than it is today. The sky is still red and the dead are still walking out there, lost, desperate people who harm no one and cry a lot. Residents are trying to flee en masse, even though it hasn’t been proven that the situation could be better anywhere else. As a matter of fact, news are coming in, weirder and weirder each day, of similar things happening in Texas as in California as in Canada as in China. People coming back, apparently out of nowhere. Sky turning all kinds of different colors. Animals changing shapes, growing parts that weren’t there before. Weird plants blooming at the corners of all streets, and then growing mouths, and then growing tendrils trying to hug passerbys whenever they walk too close.

Right now, as he looks outside the big windows opening on the landing strip outside, the clouds have started to assume human shapes and talk. It’s a weird kind of low buzzing that echoes everywhere, but those are definitely words, it’s definitely the clouds talking. How could it be any better anywhere else than here, if they’re all walking under the same sky, on the same ground?

“We should go,” the red-haired boy named Pete says, taking a look at his wristwatch, which looks different than any kind of wristwatch Cody has ever seen in his life, and more similar to some sort of weird compass. “Things are getting weirder.”

Cody gets away from the window and closer to him, checking out his ticket. One-way trip to Florence. He had to choose a place on the other side of the world – he wanted it, at least, to be a place he could love whole-heartedly. “Will it be weird in Italy too?”

“For as long as Blaine and Leo need to get back together, yeah, you’ll have to endure some more weirdness,” Pete explains, “Then everything’s going to go back to normal.”

 _Normal_. With the exception that his life will never be normal again. Normality meant waking up every day next to his husband, for him. Having breakfast with him. Working and missing him and then seeing him again and being happy, and sleeping next to him at night, and making love to him whenever he wanted, feeling his skin on his body, feeling him inside. All things he will never have again. So what will normalcy be to him? A new word to mean despair.

The mention of Blaine’s name makes him look up at him. He stands a few feet from Pete, eyes glued to the ground, an expression of pure torture on his face. He keeps his lips pressed into a thin line – he hasn’t shaved, he hasn’t combed his hair. Cody has never seen him like this. It breaks him to think that this is going to be the last he ever sees of him.

He takes one step towards him and then turns to Pete. “Could you please give us a few minutes?” he says. Pete looks at him with a worried expression. Cody figures he’s regretting having told _that other Leo_ not to follow them. So he tries a little reassuring smile. “I promise I won’t try to run away with him,” he says, “I’ve accepted what I have to do.”

Pete looks down, visibly embarrassed. He nods and looks around, finding the only cafe still open in the terminal. He heads towards it, though Cody has no idea what he’s going to order. Most foods don’t have the same taste they used to have.

He turns back towards Blaine, who’s still standing there, looking down, as if he didn’t know what to do with himself. When this whole thing started and _that other Leo_ and Pete explained the situation to them, and when later on they understood that they couldn’t escape this, no matter how hard they tried, Cody used to feel devastating pain every time he looked at Blaine. It was crippling – he couldn’t even think, that’s how much it hurt. He could just cry.

Now he’s beyond pain. He feels only a void that spreads throughout his body and numbs every other feeling down. There is nothing inside him. Nothing at all.

“Blaine.”

His husband covers his face right away, his shoulders shaking. “I can’t do this,” he utters broken-heartedly.

Cody reaches out for him and hugs him, clinging to his shoulders with one arm, passing his fingers through his hair. “Yes, you can. Of course you can. It’s too important – and you’ve always been a responsible man.”

“I don’t fucking love him,” Blaine spits out, finally wrapping his arms around Cody’s tiny frame and squeezing him tight, “I don’t even know him anymore. He’s one thing that happened to me light-years ago. I love _you_ , I don’t love him.”

“You’ll learn,” Cody insists, smiling gently, pressing his lips against Blaine’s cheek. “You’ll come to know him, you’ll start to like him, you’ll eventually fall in love with him. They said that’s what happens every time.”

“They don’t know me,” Blaine squeezes him tighter, hiding his face against Cody’s neck, “I can’t live without you. I don’t want a life without you. The universe can fall to pieces for all I care. I’ll take one second with you under the blood red sky over a lifetime of blue skies with him, no questions asked.”

Cody smiles a little as his eyelids flutter, a few tears dancing in his view. He won’t cry. He can’t cry. He won’t cry. “Blaine…” he says softly, withdrawing only to kiss him and then look at him in his watery eyes, “I love you desperately, and I would never want to leave you. But this is beyond us, and it’s not about just the sky anymore. You know that. So please, don’t--” his voice breaks just a little, “Don’t make this harder than it already is. Let me go. Let us go. It’ll be okay.”

Blaine looks at him, his eyes open wide. It’s obvious he can’t believe what Cody’s saying. He’s hurt by his words, wounded even. He’s thinking – how? How can he say something like that, smiling like that? How can he so easily say that it will be okay when every particle of my body screams in pain and grief?

But Cody knows how. Ever since he was a little boy, a part of him has always known he was living on borrowed time. William didn’t kill him only for him to try and kill himself, and when he survived and met Blaine – that’s when he knew for sure: such incredible happiness just wasn’t coherent with what life had been giving him up to that moment. It felt mismatched, misplaced, and it couldn’t last.

So that’s it. That’s life telling him happiness is over. That he was right – it couldn’t last. And as a matter of fact it didn’t. 

He’s had almost thirty years to resign to that. It would’ve been silly of him to arrive to this moment unprepared.

He parts from him – and it feels like forcibly parting from a limb. He closes his eyes and tries not to feel it. He appeals to the void. The void responds in kind, breaking his heart forever. At least now he won’t have to feel anything anymore. He can surely keep his memories – reliving them won’t hurt more than this.

“I’ve been happy,” he says – now he can’t look at him anymore. “With you… I’ve been the happiest.”

Blaine can’t answer to that. Cody can’t see his eyes but he knows how he’s looking at him. Suspended in disbelief. “Please,” he utters weakly, “Don’t leave.”

But that’s the only thing he cannot do.

He turns towards Pete, waiting at a little distance. “I’m ready,” he says. He doesn’t look at Blaine again and follows Pete towards the gates. As he walks, he looks at the desperate people around him, pale, distraught wraiths trying to make sense of a world that has none. He feels nothing for them. He’s not doing this for them.

He’s doing this for the only person who can’t understand why he’s doing it. Someone who, comes tomorrow morning, won’t even remember his sacrifice.

He doesn’t know how to feel about that. So, once again, he chooses to feel nothing.


End file.
